Being my travels down those great two lane highways of this nation as well as news I learn about them from media sources. Since I'm also very interested in historic preservation, there will be a lot of that as well.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

A Trip to Round Lake-- Part 3

When we moved out to Round Lake Beach in 1975, Rollins Road was just a two lane with one stoplight at Cedar Lake Road.

For many years, McMahon's Repair was a head shop/record store. By the way, they have a great collection of Coca Cola memorabilia. Kristoff's was there, but much smaller and just a bowling alley. I understand at one time it was a dairy farm. Pizza Hut was there as well.

We had our garage built by Turtle Garage Builders who had a couple garages for sales offices at the corner of Rollins and Hainesville Road.

The first library was at a small building on Cedar Lake Road on the same side as A-1. The second one is where the Round Lake police station is. It had been an Illinois Bell office before that. Then the library moved to its current location.

THE CORNER STATION

This was Daimler's Autohaus for many years at the corner of Cedar Lake and Washington. I am a big fan of WTTW's (Channel 11 Public Radio) Geoffrey Baer and his shows on Chicago and environs. On his most recent episode, "Hidden Chicago", he featured the Corner Station because it is one of the few places in the Chicagoland area that still pumps your gas for you, plus, for us old-timers, it has the cord that makes the bell sounds when you drive over it to alert the attendant. That's a trip back in time.

I used to use their services a lot when I worked at Magee Middle School. Anytime I needed work, I would drop the car off there and then walk the block to the building (and freak out my kids who didn't think "teachers" walked out in public like regular folk. After school, I would walk over and drive home. Now, that was convenience.